The Cold Academy
"The Backpack Generation"
Part One
By Jericho Vilar
7.
With an almost inaudible slap, the soles of his weather beaten sneakers made contact with the cold, concrete sidewalk. Like a blur, the vibrations rang up his heel towards the stoic bell of his kneecap, the string section rising inside his anatomy's silent orchestra. The force of the run plucked savage notes along the length of his achilles tendon, but the melody was easily drowned out by the hummingbird heart beat that was made when his feet first hit the ground.
The city was silent for him, contently slumbering underneath a blanket of night decorated with a light dusting of sparkling winter frost and ruthless, shark biting winds. The faint serpentine hum of insomniac downtown, The Loop, was seconds ahead of him. It was hard to concentrate on such a trivial matter at the moment even though it was a pretty rare occasion for a one man band to be left alone with the city of Chicago as his stage. There were no car engines or emergency sirens. The city held its breath for a second, all he needed was a second, then exhaled, its spent oxygen took the form of a rattling El train.
He measured his breathing along with the geography of the terrain and used the mechanical clamoring above him to estimate the El's location. The soles of his shoes screeched and imprinted its signature pattern on the concrete's grey surface as he took a hard turn into Washington then straight on a collision course with Wells St. Inside the seconds of the turn, with the El's thunderclap rumbling stampeding closer and closer, he finally took a moment to actually count his steps. For every revolution the legs of the best short distance runner made during a forty, he made two, but during the bouts of extreme anxiety which for him was the fear of being late, he made three. Muscles burned and clouds of hot breath blasted between gritted teeth, he watched the city blur in and out of focus. Then he saw it. Between the sight of his arms piston pumping with balled fists, his eyes widened as the form of a familiar stairway ascending to the sky began to take shape. He took one large gulp of air, stutter stepped, set, and launched himself into the night. He roared, he felt his jaw unclench and saw his spent oxygen make a cloud in front of his face. He smelled the cigarette smoke and the greasy stench from the slice he had at Mario's as his nose followed by the rest of his lanky frame torn through the vapors before SLAM! He landed square onto one of the top steps in a crouch, barely clearing his skull from an overhanging beam that framed the opening leading up to the platform.
"Son of a bitch!"
He yelled with eyes wide and lips folded into a smirk. He counted the inches he came to smashing his forehead onto a piece of metal now known for giving foreheads the right of way. He didn't even bother to turn back to hear the last remnants of the roar he made hobbling behind him. With pressing matters ahead, he shook away the cobwebs that lined the insides of his ocular cavities in the same nonchalant manner that is unequivocally him through and through. Casually over coming the last few steps, he slipped the black ski mask off his face and was greeted at the top of the platform by a blast of arctic wind and the explosive entrance of the second place El. Floorboards rattling and the slowing metal cars shooting by him, he ran a cold hand through the streams of sweat and matted down shards of hair hovering above his eyeballs. He patted himself down, a final check of everything being where everything was supposed to be, and let his arms and shoulders go lax to let his heavy backpack slide to the floor. It clanged on impact. He bent down to unzip its main compartment and found the four cans of Krylon spray paint he began the night with empty and caked with his fingerprints in a fine bright red along its trunks. Completely aware of the tell tale patterns that dotted the can's white label, he quickly gathered them up and deposited them into a nearby trash container, not before snapping off the fat boy caps and tossing them back into his backpack. His sense of discerning what was of importance directly led to his skewed sense of priority. With the four fat boys lying safely next to his notebook, CD player, and sacred pair of headphones, he gave the trash container a swift kick if only to hear the empty spray cans twinkle inside it, stained with his fingerprints.
His reverie was broken by the El's hiss, the signal that it had finally reached its destination. Having already been a major theme that night, time once again became an issue when the El's doors creaked open. In one smooth motion, he stuffed the ski mask into the backpack, pulled out a burgundy blazer, and lunged into the train with his meager belongings all held in one hand. Being its only occupant, he threw his backpack into one of the prime spots of real estate right in front of the sliding doors and dragged his exhausted body next to it. The El grumbled to life while he struggled to get the tight black hooded sweatshirt free from his sweat soaked torso. The white dress shirt and tie that he wore underneath clung lustily to his skin and dark stains crept silently from his underarms out. After having stuffed the hooded sweatshirt into the backpack, he begrudgingly pulled himself into the blazer's embrace. With everything finally settled, he leaned back into the seat and exhaled with every part of his body. The El shuddered and shook beginning its locomotion and left him the only being able to enjoy its glorious ruckus. Annoyed by the noise's shameless intrusion of his privacy, he dug back into his backpack and pulled out his trusted means of escape. Letting its long tendril drape itself over his lap, he slowly slipped on his headphones, the most important invention, along with the cigarette lighter and the cellular phone, man has ever created in his own personal opinion. It perfectly hugged his ears tightly, but not too tight, just tight enough to make it nearly impossible for the outside world to sneak in when set to the proper volume. He'd spent a good portion of his conscious life analyzing the joys and nuances of headphones, the perfect headphones, his headphones. He'd impressed and seduced many a comely young lass with his poetic tellings of the secret history of headphones, but in reality he'd also let hundreds of potentially life altering moments pass him by because of those headphones. But, at that moment, it was the furthest thing from his mind. He merely put them on in the instinctual, practiced way that he'd done thousands of times before and pressed play. Eyes fluttering in anticipation of the notion of sleep, the last sight he saw that night on the purple line was the ornate badge stitched onto the blazer right above his heart.
The Winterville Academy crest.
After a night that found him dangling three stories high while defacing the pristine walls of the Chicago Housing Authority's Occupancy Department in a manner that would make graff legend MearOne proud, that pretentious logo on his chest made for a pretty anticlimactic ending.
Disgusted, he let the back of his head touch the El's scratch bombed window and searched for a better way to end the night. It came to him right as the Wu-Tang Clan ordered him to 'bring da ruckus, bring da motherfucking ruckus.'
With eyes closed, Jack Street saw himself tearing through the silent streets of Chicago, three sheets to the wind, punishing concrete with his ancient Chuck Taylors excited in knowing the chaos that tomorrow would bring because of him.
***
8.
Jack woke up quietly and to no fanfare.
His head was dusted with a light smattering of cobwebs and strain from the previous night's work, nothing compared to the hard, inner ear jack hammering that he'd woken up to the past thirteen consecutive mornings prior. A fact that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, to him at least, that adrenaline highs were much easier to walk away from than their chemically induced brethren. Although that, in no uncertain terms, didn't mean that his nights would be solely spent on aerobic street terrorism and cardio intensive shenanigans because honestly it just wouldn't be possible. Ever since his taste buds first experienced the drink at the ripe old age of eleven, late night pub crawls and excessive liquor consumption have been a major staple of his waking life, so much so that it ranked a close second to watching television and spending time logged onto online friend communities. Standing over the toilet for the day's first piss, he decided that even if it did carry the weight and importance of a new year's resolution, a balance had to be made. A vow that was quickly shelved when the digital chirping of his cellphone rang incessantly in the background of his one room rental.
Jack groaned at the sure sign of the beginning of the day and the necessary movement on his part that it involved. After having shook the last droplets of yellow liquid inside him, he zipped up and slowly made his way towards the night stand where his fresh from the manufacturer, two way, PDA, MP3 player, flip top burden rattled oh so subtly waiting to be answered. Kicking away the crushed cigarette packets and loose sketchbook pages that perpetually littered his dingy carpeted floor, he swiftly snatched the phone, flipped it open, and held it to his groggy head in the fluid dramatic way his generation had developed into an art form.
"What?" he croaked into his expensive tether to the outside world. He was answered on the other end by a deep, rhythmic growl that he grew to both respect and admire since he first was treated to it.
"Channel seven," it answered back.
Nodding to no one in particular, Jack stabbed his free hand into the blanket folds of his rickety futon and came out holding a television remote. He punched in a sequence of soft, broken in buttons turning on the t.v., the cable, and the surround sound system in that order. The blank eye of his big screen blinked once then revealed a well dressed newscaster mechanically reciting the mid day news.
"...although unavailable for comment, last night's audacious act of vandalism is believed to be a part of the escalating campaign against the City Housing Authority's negligence of the urban housing project's reportedly dire circumstances..."
One eye on the screen, Jack couldn't help but crack a smile.
"When did they start covering it?" he asked not bothering to hide the delight in his voice.
"Top story, five am news, money," the phone answered back contrasting the giddiness in Jack's voice with a somber satisfaction of his own.
"They got any clue on who would do such a daring, not to mention stylish, act of pubic disturbance?"
Letting the phone indulge in a slight bit of chuckling, Jack hopped back into bed and got himself into a relaxed viewing position, legs crossed and arm behind his neck.
"Nah. They ain't got shit. They came around this morning though, asking about shit."
Jack nodded his head and pulled a pillow behind his head.
"So we're good?" he half asked, half stated.
"We good," the phone strongly stated back.
"Nice," Jack replied as he dug his thin, wiry frame deeper into the futon's nurturing mattress, his eyes slowly blinked ready for another round of sleep.
"You gonna hit the spot later on?"
The voice's heavy flow began to lull him to slumber with each passing syllable.
"Probably. I don't know. I got class tomorrow," Jack answered back.
"Like that fucking matters."
"First day back, B. It kinda matters."
"You expecting big things tomorrow?"
Jack laughed along with the phone. That question when asked in regards to his scholastic schedule was just about as rhetorical as a rhetorical question could get.
"Fuck off, dude," Jack snapped back knowing full well how white he truly sounded even against his best efforts.
"Whatever, DUDE," the phone shouted into his ear accentuating the tell tale term to the best of his ability which in that case was more than good enough to put Jack back into the reality of the privileged life that he taught himself to resent as soon as it was cool enough to resent it.
"Fine," Jack conceded. "I'm there."
"That's right. Jump off at Mario's. Be there by eleven thirty. I got your pay back for you, too."
Jack pulled the covers up to his chin and sighed at the monotony of the night's itinerary.
"Got it," he yawned into the phone. "See you there."
Just as he was about to snap the phone shut, Jack peeked back at the television. His eyes widened as the newscast cut to a live shot of the Chicago Housing Authority Building. Drenched in bold strokes was a riot of jagged lines and drop shadows. Peeling back the anxiety of his work as he scrawled them half blind the night before, Jack marveled at his masterpiece. The teachings of the legends, Nick Salsa and Slang being the highest one on his list, bled from the screen and into his eyes. The old school style spelled out in a new school lexicon. The writers on the block who knew the craft would see the intricacies that hid between the pain and the brick. The pedestrians on the street would dismiss it as trash, visual pollution, but even from the sidewalks or the corners where they waited patiently to get to where they need to go, they understood what it meant. Jack was the writer, the building was the page, and they were his audience. Look up and they had no choice but to quite literally read the writing on the wall.
THEY STOLE OUR CITY.
Jack read it to himself whispered it under his breath, and hoped that all of Chicago were doing the same.
"Nice moves, Jack," the phone in his ear told that which he knew to be true.
"Yeah, thanks. Tonight then."
Jack turned off the t.v.
"Peace."
***
9.
Jack walked shoulder to shoulder with the still born night, his head held closely between the calming embrace of his headphones. Pregnant with thought and faculties cleared by sixteen hours of sleep and nine Dr. Peppers, he stepped out into the empty streets of small town Evanston wishing for the unexpected and the strange, but certain he would not be obliged either. Years of strictly regimented private schooling had robbed him of his once manic sense of spontaneity, an unconscious after effect that he had strongly tried to counter act but even then his lashing out ended up being forced or, even worse, held the feeling of being scheduled. It came to a point where his parents could set their watches to the minute he was about to get kicked out of one of their highly thought of establishment of academia. It took him four years, three expensive academic money pits, two coasts, and one unprecedented world news event halfway around the world to get him to the place he was that day. Taking in a lung full of clean midwestern air, Jack entered the Central Ave. station wondering if, after all those years and some miraculous turn of events, he had finally mellowed out. He shuddered at the thought and felt for the volume dial on his CD player hidden in his jeans pocket. It wouldn't go any higher.
Sitting alone on the bench at the station platform, Jack half heartedly thought about his mother, the roving reporter. He pictured her in one unbelievable situation after another, in an overturned subway car typing furiously on her laptop as a giant monster of the week threatened the lives of anything and anyone in its path or on a bus lifted high above the ground that once held it by a costumed madman prone to over dramatic tantrums and non-sensical monologues. She'd be in there, he thought, among the frantic passengers dodging screams of agony and last minute overtures to God, or whatever higher power they bought into, squeezing the last drop of ink from her pen into a tiny notepad, the kind that he's always known her to have on her immediate person at all times. Constantly surrounded by danger, she was the calm center of the world. A world that, at that specific point in time, was an ocean away from him.
Jack never got along with his parents. He felt that they've always asked too much from him. Knowing full well that they'd never be there when their requests were granted. He held a unique type of resentment towards his mother, a sentiment not new to troubled young men of his age group but unique nonetheless considering their emotional dynamic. His father left when he turned thirteen. He left, that was that. Fuck him, he thought. His mother, on the other hand, was the semi-constant in his life. She was the only one left to take the brunt of his often times heartless attacks. They rarely talked, but he read every work she wrote. He once even kept a construction paper scrap book of all of her articles, including a first printing of the one that garnered her her first Pulitzer nomination. Socked away in a shoe box somewhere in the continental United States, its last entry was dated the day before she sent him away to his first private school. Headstrong and stubborn, Jack was without a doubt his mother's son. She was his hero then. She was the person that failed him now.
After retying the laces on his Chucks, Jack lit a cigarette while Julie Ann Street, his mother, one of the world's most sought after and highly paid journalists, was knelt down behind a dumpster in an alleyway in Pacific City Australia moments away from witnessing a promised end of the world, her third that week.
He exhaled and waited restlessly in a safe, little township fourteen miles north of America's Second City for the often delayed purple line completely unaware. In the distance, he saw the castle like outline of the Winterville Academy cut into the sky in black.
Jack still read ever word she wrote.
The only act of love he was capable of.
***
10.
Jack believed in the importance of backpacks. Sturdy, weatherproof, and without the pretentiousness of a woman's purse, the backpack if implemented correctly could be the center of one's universe. As is the case with everything in life, its inherent value is dependent on each individual person, but for the young men and women of his certain disposition an item as insignificant as a department store backpack could easily be equated to a car or a major household appliance both in magnitude and influence in one's lifestyle. Nomadic in nature and perfectly crafted for the unanchored soul, the department store backpack contains within its gaping maw the power to make one review priorities and truly, honestly, take stock in their lives. If approached in the right way, which the individuals who share Jack's feeling on the matter usually do, choosing which items belong in the backpack becomes a cathartic act, a practice in zen, a statement of detachment. The less you have tucked away inside it, the more you are able to be peace with the concept of distance. With the advent of the office in your pocket cellular phone and the lifetime's worth of songs in a box the size of a packet of cigarettes MP3 player, the youth of Jack's generation more and more have taken to the allure of the movement, consciously or unconsciously, in one form or another. Protected by the clothes on their backs and the core ingredients of their lives hanging from their shoulders, they are free, upwardly mobile entities haunting the cities and streets of the world. With all of the conveniences of the modern world behind them, they're not as brave as they'd like to believe. In the end, it just sounded good on paper.
Having traveled on planes, trains, and automobiles, Jack's backpack has played the role of the sole companion, partner in crime, and long suffering sidekick. Covered in band pins, ironic patches, magic marker drawings, and spray can splatter, it has stood by his side since the second he ran out of the big chain department store desperately clutching it to his exploding chest. Unintentionally modest, it has seen more than most living breathing human beings Jack's age. Bobbing lifelessly as Jack made his way up crowded Halsted St. towards the loud wrist throb pulse of Mario and Son's Old Fashioned Pizzeria, it was as most of the harried people it passed saw it to be, just a backpack, but to its owner it was a badge. The large crowd of well dressed, indie hipsters, each sporting one of their own, clamoring for a slice of Mario's grease drenched deep dish house special before heading off to their night's main event only needed a sideways glance to recognize it. The crowd of dreadlocked and cornrowed African American youths waving Jack to their standing room only outside table were no different even if they hadn't known Jack ever since he stepped foot onto their city looking for whatever disenfranchised young men like Jack often looked for. They knew the important of badges.
Disappearing into the crowd of like minded headphones, aviator glasses, costume school girl skirts, opened cellphones, ironic t-shirts, and cigarette smoke, Jack and the life he held from two plastic straps draped across his shoulder blades felt belonged. In the throng of self important, self appointed wanderers, they felt at home for better or for worse.
The seekers of distance.
Camaraderie through isolation.
Hello, my name is elitism.
The backpack generation.
***
11.
The story's changed over time, details lost then found then revised for effect. Jack first met Khalil two and a half years ago in the teeth of a sweltering summer, his third day in Chicago on the corner of Milwaukee and Monroe. A modest three story walk up, grey bricked and piss stained graffiti, set the stage for their initial encounter. Under the shadows of the hard charging El, Jack walked sheepishly into Hard Times Records, the first of the three floors, hoping to somehow stumble onto a Japanese import copy of Bright Eyes' 'Fever and Mirrors.' With the Smashing Pumpkins' 'Zero' crashing in his headphones, he stepped into the musty old record store still retracing his route back to his one room Evanston hovel visibly green behind the ears in the ways of his new city. The night club flyer encrusted door shuddered to grant him entrance to the disorganized mess of what he still believes to be a crucial turning point in his young life. Gaze shifting sporadically, his synapses fired quickly behind his eyes as he tried to decipher the store's genre placards breathlessly searching for the port where his treasure was sure to be buried. Resigned to being utterly hopeless, he shuffled his feet noisily to the unmanned counter in the center aisle and coughed once to announce that yes he was a customer and yes, he did indeed need some assistance.
The sound of a needle dropping on a record filled the empty store through the mouths of the P.A. system grafted onto each corner intersection where one wall met the other when Khalil's head peeked out from behind the glass case partition.
"Sup, man?" he asked Jack in his throaty growl, not shy about flashing the minimum wage, disgruntled MC in his voice.
Taken aback as Khalil's six foot four frame started rising from the abyss of the counter, Jack forced out a weak grin from his trembling lip.
"What's going on? Yeah, I'm looking for a Bright Eyes import of..."
"Don't got it," Khalil cut him off impatiently. "Go to Tower."
Khalil stood a good three inches taller than Jack. He loomed over the misplaced white boy decked out in a grey and red Phat Farm hoodie, his perfectly sculpted afro was a dark halo easily capable of eclipsing the sun. He locked a hard, brown eyed stare into Jack and blatantly scanned him from head to toe for an impromptu tale of the tape.
"Look, I just want to know if you have this one record. The band's called Bright Eyes and..."
Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets and bravely returned Khalil's stare. Silence was inevitable. What was still in question was whether or not he'd leave the store with his manhood intact. White boy or not, Jack knew when he was being stepped to. Public Enemy's 'Fear of a Black Planet' began to play around them.
Khalil's gaunt visage tightened. His brow furrowed, considering what was, in all actuality, his first customer of the day. His eyes slowly toke in all of Jack's features, his thin aquiline nose, his square jaw, but what really caught his attention were the $150 pair of Sony, DJ quality headphones on his head and the ratty backpack hovering over his spine. Khalil, in his infinite wisdom, knew one of his ilk when he saw one. Birds of a feather and all that shit.
Then he relaxed his clenched jaw, much to Jack's surprise.
"Bright Eyes is Conor Oberst," he began. "Signed to Saddle Creek Records outta Omaha. You're looking for the import of his third record, the lime green one with the girl dancing and the bat. Cat's getting mad hype these days. The new Dylan and shit. I like Leonard Cohen better. We don't got it."
Jack's weak grin grew to a wide smirk. As much as he knew when he was being stepped to, he knew even less about being considered for initiation. Having been moved around as many times as he was moved around, making acquaintances was an invaluable skill that he had still to master. Friends like these never came that easy.
"Nice one," Jack answered easing himself into a comfortable slouch. "Jack."
Khalil nodded once and held his fist out.
"Khalil," he shot back. "New in town?"
"Three days ago."
They bumped fists.
"You gotta stop messing around with that emo shit, B. Just end up killing yourself, know what I mean?"
"It hits the spot. Why? Got anything better?"
For the first time since Jack walked into the store, Khalil let some emotion filter through a sly grin. Walking out from behind the counter, Khalil lead Jack to an aisle in the back of the store marked 'Native Tongue.'
"You heard of Common Sense?"
Jack's been the best customer of Hard Times Records since.
***
12.
Imagine bargain brand plastic lawn furniture as the ribcage housing a still beating heart, deep green molded plastic chairs softened over the years by the weight of three generations worth of customers during decades of lunch hour rushes and a table lost of all its tacky luster scratch bombed with pen knives and the tips of ball point pens in an urban form of hieroglyphics, a grease stained braille read by tapping your fingers on its surface as you wait for your order. At the head of the table sat Khalil Caldwell, afro gone having since made way to an intricate pattern of corn rows that crowned his granite set bone structure, the heart surrounded by the boisterous ramblings of the usual suspects around him, his appendages, the veins.
"Ah shit. Here comes the rock," he shouted over his congregation after having seen Jack approaching from the corner of his eye. He stood motioning the hangers on around him to make room and grab their party's newest addition a seat right next to him.
Jack, having slipped the headphones from his head, stepped into Khalil's atmosphere and made the rounds of introductory fist bumps along the way.
"Sup y'all," Jack shouted in spite of the grumbling Mario's crowd behind him. He smelled the sweet remains of imported marijuana on the clothes of the constituency before he finally took his place among them.
Finally settled, Khalil wrapped an arm around Jack's shoulder disturbing his slouch and slapped him hard on the chest.
"The man who can, motherfuckers. The man who can," proclaimed Khalil prompting congratulatory shouts and one handed shoulder brush offs from those close enough to Jack to give them.
Although at least a year younger than the rest, Jack had grown into prominence within the group since his auspicious introduction to them two and a half years ago. His relationship with Khalil's childhood friends started awkwardly, being a rich child of privilege among the low income defenders of Chicago's infamous Harmony Projects there were no other options but to be awkward, but has exponentially grown less so since then. Each and every one of them grown quite fond of Jack, at first in the manner one would be with a novelty or a new pet to the frat boy brotherhood they shared today. After the first meeting, Jack's race was deemed a non issue, by Khalil for the most part who imposed the sentiment inaudibly throughout the group the way a good leader would when given an archaic lightning rod that he knew to be not worth hassling over and, not to mention, bullshit. Scanning the faces of the young men around the table's borders, Jack was reminded that although he had the majority vote, it wasn't a unanimous decision. From the foot of the table, Tyronn Pines' silent, razor thing stare made that plainly obvious.
"Should've been there, money," shouted Luscious 'Lil Rob' Roberson into Jack's right ear. "My moms straight cried she was so hyped when she saw it on the news."
Large almond eyes shining under his black Kangol's brim, Lil Rob happily slapped Jack across the spine. Once the most junior member of the group, Lil Rob was the first to come around about Jack, if for no other reason than his being there took him up a peg in the group's pecking order. Jack playfully pushed him back in retaliation. After sharing Pharcyde records over ice cold Coronas one afternoon during his first Chicago summer, Jack knew that he was allowed to return Lil Rob's friendly abuse without the risk of ruffling any of the other boy's feathers.
The congratulations flowed freely and loudly with the aid of the paper bag wrapped forty ounces of Bud they passed around the table, each one recounting the exact second they saw Jack's handiwork showcased prominently in the display case of their television sets. Two years to the day of his very first successful mission, Jack took extra special joy in soaking in the applause. He quietly nodded at each compliment and laughed at every joke. Not normally known for his modesty, Jack took great effort in performing the trait when in the company of the Harmony Project kids because he knew of their sincerity and their true appreciation for his art. More importantly, he knew the real reasons behind it. Praise like that Jack couldn't get enough of, from the once and future teachers and guides to the student and tourist that he was when he first met them. The quieter he was the louder they clapped.
Khalil sat back not saying a word. He laughed and nodded along with them, but since he knew Jack the longest, he knew when to knock him off his high horse and when to let alone to bask in the brilliant glow of the spotlight. Out of all of them, Khalil knew he deserved it. He just wouldn't give Jack the joy of having him say it out loud for the whole group to hear.
One house special turned to two and a Stonehenge of empty beer bottles in the middle of the buckling table later, the ego stroking stopped. The conversations splintered into side talks and tiny arguments. Lil Rob and his cousin on his late father's side, Jason 'Four Five' Tavers, launched into a dissection of Nas' alarmingly rapid decline to mediocrity.
"Its cause he started fucking Kelis," Jack heard Lil Rob explain only to be countered by Four Five's recounting of Nas' beef with the newly minted King of New York, Jay-Z.
Across the table, 'Sage' Curtis Anderson held court with his tired and true dissertation on the state of hip hop today. Not in the mood to offer his recent discovery of the avant garde, underground rap Def Jux collective, Jack maintained his epic slouch and silently let the minutes tick away with a cigarette dangling from his lip.
Khalil, not new to Jack's bouts of shyness, leaned his head towards him and motioned with his neck for Jack to do the same.
"Got that pay back for you, money." he whispered to Jack.
Jack nodded back and watched as Khalil opened the backpack that he left on the sidewalk next to his seat. It revealed a flat parcel the size of a large envelope wrapped in a Hard Times paper bag. Khalil nodded again granting Jack access into his personal backpack to take it. Curious as to its contents, Jack carefully took the parcel and slipped his prize free from the backpack's mouth. The familiar sound of the crinkling Hard Times bag underneath his fingertips caused no one to turn their attention towards the clandestine exchange. The bag's rough surface triggered Jack's anticipation into overdrive, a sensation he'd felt every time he rushed home from the record store after having unloaded an exorbitant amount of his mother's money for something that he probably didn't need.
Keeping the parcel under the table and out of the rest of the party's line of sight, Jack gripped the very edge of the record's circumference feeling the grooves cut into it where the music was held, trapped in the black vinyl prison begging to be freed. Then he tugged it free from the cardboard sleeve and read the white label in the center.
"Casper's Groovy Ghost Show?" He recited it to himself. Jack's throat constricted the second the title left his tongue. Shocked, eyes on the verge of popping out of their sockets, he turned to Khalil solemnly nodding.
"My grandma cried when she saw it too," he told Jack.
Casper's Groovy Ghost Show, released as a twelve inch in 1980, was the very first hip hop release by a Chicago artist. Done in a limited pressing at the time, copies of the record had been owned solely by hardcore collectors or parents unaware that they had it hidden somewhere in a disco era cardboard box decorating their garages. Extremely valuable, especially around the city, the record was an artifact of the city's musical past. A grail to some and an incendiary device to others of the burgeoning scene that Jack's been living and breathing in for the past two and a half years. A relative newcomer, and a poser for all intents and purposes, Jack was just given a talisman that he was not worthy of. Confused and at a loss for words, he slipped it back into the sleeve and tried to hand it back to Khalil.
"I can't take this," Jack protested but was turned away when Khalil, in anticipation of Jack's reaction, zipped his backpack shut and stood.
"Khalil, seriously, I can't."
Jack looked up at Khalil. It was from his personal collection. They both knew that pay back was a severe understatement for the gesture. All of the other times, all of the other jobs, and all of the other pay backs or pay off or bounties or what have you, none of it compared. Suddenly, lost in a moment of self consciousness, Jack wondered what Khalil expected him to pull off next.
Khalil shook the seriousness off his shoulders and casually checked his cellphone for the time. Leaving Jack hanging, he grabbed his backpack and pushed the plastic chair from behind him.
"Let's be out. 12:40, bitches," he announced. The group, nine strong, stubbed out cigarettes, drained bottles, and unceremoniously ended conversations. They stood to grab backpacks from the sidewalk and started down the street.
Khalil towering over Jack with the table freshly deserted looked down and smacked him on the shoulder.
"Buddha Lounge," he said. "Let's roll."
It was Freestyle Sessions at the Funky Buddha Lounge, Jack remembered it to be the whole point of the night, and put the record into his backpack. As he was about to rise to his feet an explosion lit up the dark skyline. All of Mario's turned to look up at the temporary star that illuminated the night sky.
Two caped individuals, one clad in dark blues and grey while the other in bright whites and red, carved vapor trails in the stratosphere like two birds of prey fighting over the carcass that was the city below them.
"Are they at it again?"
Jack heard Mario ask from inside the molten core of the kitchen.
Mr. Imperial and The Last Sisyphus waged war miles above them as regular as a late season implosion by their beloved Cubbies. Inciting the same reaction either way, Mario and his loyal patrons all turned back to their slices of pie.
Jack, threatened with being left behind, looked for Khalil who stood in the middle of the empty street.
"Sup, money? You in?" he shouted to Jack.
Nodding, Jack shot from his seat backpack secured in place and crossed the street behind him.
They locked eyes on the other side when Khalil pointed to the meaningless struggle above them.
"They stole our city," Khalil shouted to the city.
"They're next."